Monsters and aliens competing for whom is less interesting—it’s a draw

Monsters vs. Aliens
Review by Nathan Weinbender

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the “K” in DreamWorks SKG, has been touting the company’s latest picture, “Monsters vs. Aliens,” as a watershed in 3-D technology. He calls digital 3-D the third great revolution in cinema. “The first came in the twenties when silent movies became talkies,” Katzenberg explained recently. “The second came in the following decade, when we went from black-and-white to color. Now, 70 years on, we’re in the third great revolution: the new generation of 3D.”

In Katzenberg’s mind, there will be a time when 2-D cinematography will be a thing of the past, when audiences will refuse to see a movie unless things are thrown at the screen and out into the theater. “If David Lean had made ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ using these tools and techniques,” he says, “I think it would be even more extraordinary.” I can just imagine film historians, asked to name the most significant movies in history, rattling off a list similar to this: “The Birth of a Nation,” “Gone with the Wind,” “Monsters vs. Aliens.”

Katzenberg isn’t speaking as a rational lover of film but as a publicist, and as someone who will make more money off of 3-D movies than any of us will in our lifetimes. He is so overzealous to sell his movie that he has neglected to name the advent of feature animation as a major cinematic revolution: Not only was it a revolution, Mr. Katzenberg, but without it, “Monsters vs. Aliens” would never have been possible, 3-D or not.

Yes, 3-D has come a long way in the last few years. This movie utilizes an advanced digital technique called InTru3D, which creates a crisper, more enhanced 3-D effect, and it results in some of the best 3-D I’ve ever seen in a megaplex at the mall. I’ve always felt 3-D to be a gimmick. For me, it doesn’t add from the mechanics of the film, but distracts from them. But Katzenberg says InTru3D will allow “artists to tell a more compelling story and give filmgoers a more exciting, immersive 3-D movie experience.”

I don’t buy into any of this, because if InTru3D really makes a film more compelling, exciting and immersive, why is “Monsters vs. Aliens” so painfully pedestrian? The answer, I think, is in the very 3-D that Katzenberg has been hyping as the Second Coming. Even though the technology has advanced, it has yet to become a necessity. This movie looks great, but the filmmakers have taken such care in crafting the effects that they’ve completely neglected to write a compelling script.

Seeing movies like this, I always try to let the kid in me take over and just enjoy the ride. This is a movie about monsters and aliens, I told myself, and they will be fighting; it’s as simple as that. The first fifteen minutes seemed promising: There are some funny nods to ‘50s B-pictures, like “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” and “The Blob,” some witty lines of dialogue and a couple of neat action sequences. But the film simply isn’t charming, original or engaging, and I lost interest very quickly.

The story, as thin as it is, concerns a woman named Susan Murphy (voice by Reese Witherspoon), who, on her wedding day, is struck by an asteroid, becomes radioactive and grows to be, oh, fifty feet or so. She’s detained by the government, nicknamed Ginormica and partnered with various other monsters, including a brainless lump of blue goo (Seth Rogen), a mad scientist-cockroach hybrid (Hugh Laurie) and an aquatic ape with an insatiable libido (Will Arnett).

Pretty soon, the conflict of the title is realized, and Earth is attacked by Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson), a neurotic, maniacal alien bent on, you guessed it, world domination. He has armies of clones and robots, resulting in a couple of impressive scenes, including the complete destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge. The CGI effects are wonderful here, rich with color and detail, although the 3-D glasses tend to darken the picture.

I liked most of the voice performers, too, especially Rogen as the blob (he elevates the role from being a pale shadow of Ellen DeGeneres’ character in “Finding Nemo”), Kiefer Sutherland as a gruff Army general named W.R. Monger, and Stephen Colbert, very funny, as the staunch but clueless President. When the alien mother ship lands, he sets up a synthesizer and plays the five-note greeting from “Close Encounters,” hoping to keep it at bay.

Although “Monsters vs. Aliens” is in three dimensions, the story only has one; it’s technically impressive, but it has nothing original to say. Films like “Toy Story” and “The Incredibles” balanced striking visuals with unique characters and plots, and here it’s obvious that all the care and attention went into the special effects. I could just bow down and say that the movie is good for the kids, but since this is supposed to be a great revolution in the history of cinema, I don’t think I can be so kind.

Directed by Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon. Written by Maya Forbes, Wallace Wolodarsky, Rob Letterman, Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger. Featuring the voices of Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Kiefer Sutherland, Rainn Wilson, Paul Rudd and Stephen Colbert. PG; 94m.

Death by numbers

Knowing
Review by Nathan Weinbender

“Knowing” is equal parts ridiculous and engrossing, a cheesy sci-fi potboiler dressed up in million-dollar clothing. It concerns itself with many weighty subjects, including the order of the universe, the fragility of mankind and possible Armageddon, but it’s hardly physiologically complex; in fact, it’s mostly quite silly.

Yet, almost in spite of myself, I found the film to be completely involving, even though the story loses its footing in the final acts.

The movie’s mythology is rooted in a sheet of paper covered with seemingly random numbers, an artifact from a time capsule buried fifty years ago. Nicolas Cage, playing astrophysicist and MIT professor John Koestler, discovers all too quickly that the code has accurately predicted nearly ever major disaster in recent history.

And, whaddaya know, there are only three tragedies remaining before the numbers run out! So Koestler makes it his mission to stop the events, which begin with a plane crashing in a field and end with what could very well be the apocalypse.

If that isn’t bad enough, Koestler’s young son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) starts seeing dark figures in the woods outside the house. They whisper to him, he says, and make him envision terrible things. Later on, they pull up in a car and drop a shiny black stone into his hands.

By the halfway point, I was surprisingly absorbed in this premise. Sure, its solemnity will probably merit chuckles from most audiences (any movie that takes itself even halfway seriously runs that risk these days), but I went happily along with the movie’s apocalyptic fervor.

Maybe it has to do with the director, Alex Proyas, who turned “The Crow” and “Dark City” into superior gothic dramas. His shadowy, angular style lends itself well to both suspense (there is genuine tension when Cage approaches the dark figures in a field) and action (a sequence involving the derailment of a subway train is amazingly well done).

The screenplay is credited to three different writers, and it shows. It begins with a perfectly intriguing premise that asks a fairly astute question—is the universe founded on free will or determinism?—and ends with spaceships and explosions and religious symbolism and the like. I don’t know; I suppose a story with the ultimate destination of certain catastrophe is bound to be excessive.

The critical response to “Knowing” has been mostly lackluster. It’s “mumbo jumbo on an apocalyptic scale,” says the Baltimore Sun, and the Boston Globe reports that it “sails boldly off the edge of the absolutely preposterous.” The New York Daily News asks, “Do you mind if the filmmakers couldn’t decide what they were making? An apocalyptic chiller? Disaster flick? Alien horror movie? Paranoid religious parable?”

I get it, and I guess I agree to a certain extent. The plot is self-righteous, the musical score is bombastic and manipulative, the story unravels at a remarkable rate in its last moments and Cage is so enamored with doomsday prophecies and cryptic numerology that he practically froths at the mouth.

But sometimes a movie just works in spite of everything. Sure, I can rattle off the film’s problems in hindsight, but I can’t deny that it held me captive in the moment. Rather than ask how or why, I’d simply like to acknowledge that it just did.

Directed by Alex Proyas. Written by Ryne Douglas Pearson, Juliet Snowden and Stiles White. Starring Nicolas Cage, Chandler Canterbury, Rose Byrne, Lara Robinson, Nadia Townsend and D.G. Maloney. PG-13; 122m.

Bursts of violence, followed by the quiet pall of death

Gomorrah
Review by Nathan Weinbender

Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah” is a startling film—startling in its construction, startling in its execution, startling in its unswerving depiction of organized crime in Italy. It is a very good film, one that peers into a terrifying world and refuses to look away.

The movie is a far cry from any gangster picture I’ve seen, as nothing here is eulogized or stylized: The Hollywood veneer has been chipped away, and the result is wonderfully rough around the edges.

It isn’t just that the film is inspired by true events—Roberto Saivano’s tell-all book was so controversial, he still lives under police surveillance. It is Garrone’s approach, which at first feels slim and eventually assumes a raw power: The photography here is spare, the locations grubby and under-lit and the actors unfamiliar.

Watching it, I got the feeling that Garrone had turned his camera on real people in the real world and that forces more powerful than the screenplay were controlling their destinies.

The opening scene sets the tone: We see a group of well-groomed men in a murky, upscale spa, getting tans and manicures. They joke around, make small talk, and suddenly, without warning, they are shot dead. Violence comes in unexpected, messy bursts, and it leaves an eerie quiet in its undertow: When characters are killed in this film, and quite a few of them are, the camera hangs on them in a stunned silence. It’s deeply effective.

The story explores the inner workings of the Camorra, Italy’s oldest and most powerful crime syndicate, and it follows five separate plot strands, each one illustrative of the organization’s ever-reaching grasp. The script ebbs and flows from one character to another, and although the film’s construction sometimes feels haphazard, it replicates the chaos and disorder of real life: The movie does not always give us catharsis, and its interweaving stories don’t always overlap.

We first meet Totò (Nicolo Manta), a young boy who delivers groceries for his family’s business. He witnesses a drug bust and returns a discarded gun to the criminals who lost it. They decide to induct him into their clan, and the initiation process involves the wannabe gangsters donning bulletproof vests and being shot in the chest. The bruise it leaves behind is like a badge of honor: We later see Totò as he admires his in the mirror.

There’s also Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato), a financial intermediary between the Camorra and the families of its imprisoned members. He becomes involved in clan warfare, and, in a bid to save his own life, he supplies valuable information to the begrudged that results in everyone around him getting killed. And there’s a ruthless businessman named Franco (Toni Servillo), who casually dumps toxic waste in an abandoned quarry. When one of his drivers is injured, he hires children to operate the trucks.

Also in the shuffle is Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo), a tailor who specializes in haute couture fashion. His work is overseen by the Camorra, and when he is offered a chance to tutor workers in a rival Chinese sweatshop, he accepts in order to earn extra money for his family. He travels to and from the factory in the dead of night, hunkered in a hidden compartment in the back of the owner’s car.

Probably the most intriguing segment, however, involves two young men, Marco (Marco Macor), a scrappy James Cagney type, and Ciro (Ciro Petrone), an ungainly beanpole of a kid. They long to be gangsters, and their prayers are answered when they discover a stockpile of stolen guns. They use dialogue that they’ve most certainly heard in the movies, and at one point they chase one another through an empty warehouse, wielding unloaded pistols and re-enacting scenes from “Scarface.”

Later on, they strip down to their underwear and run down the beach, firing off rounds from semi-automatic weapons at driftwood and deserted boats. Their naïveté leads to them be outsmarted by the original owners of the guns, and their final scene would have seemed more tragic had it not been so inevitable.

In fact, the whole of “Gomorrah” plays like that: Tragic, yet inevitable. A prevailing sense of dread hangs over every scene, and Garrone’s camerawork is both peaceful and unnerving: He allows shots to linger for what seems like an eternity, gradually revealing details in the frame, and at any moment we could be struck by a blast of violence, followed by the quiet pall of death.

The film reminded me of last year’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” which, like “Gomorrah,” played almost like a documentary. That picture, which chronicled a hasty and illegal abortion in 1987 Romania, was like a sucker punch in the gut, and I went back to see it again to see if its impact would be as devastating a second time (it was).

Both films are very different tonally, but they each play like grim extensions of the French New Wave movement—they are sparse, blunt and difficult to watch, but they’re both incredibly rewarding.

Note: “Gomorrah” has had a limited theatrical run since February and is currently available for viewing OnDemand.

Directed by Matteo Garrone. Written by Garrone, Roberto Saviano, Maurizio Braucci, Ugo Chiti, Gianni Di Gregorio and Massimo Gaudioso; based on the book by Saviano. Starring Gianfelice Imparato, Salvatore Cantalupo, Marco Macor, Ciro Petrone, Toni Servillo, Carmine Paternoster and Nicolo Manta. Not rated; 135m.

The Rock who went up Witch Mountain and came down as Dwayne Johnson

Race to Witch Mountain
Review by Nathan Weinbender

I really like the Rock. Oh, excuse me. I meant to say Dwayne Johnson, who, in his transition from pro wrestler to movie star, has discovered that one cannot maintain professionalism with silly nicknames. It’s probably for the best; just look at Hulk Hogan’s acting career.

Johnson has filled the void that Arnold Schwarzenegger left when his gubernatorial instincts got the best of him. Like Schwarzenegger, he’s both a legitimate action hero and a charismatic and likable leading man—he’s right at home in something like “The Scorpion King,” but he can just as easily carry a wholesome Disney film.

“Race to Witch Mountain” is his second Disney film, actually, following the innocuous “The Game Plan,” and it serves as another example of his versatility: He gets to crack off one-liners, beat up the bad guys, be a big, snuggly hero for a couple of kids and a love interest for Carla Gugino. It’s competent family entertainment, but hardly exceptional, though Johnson is good enough to make you wish he could find a vehicle worthy of his appeal.

He plays Jack Bruno, a reformed felon who now drives a cab in Vegas (I’ve never seen a cabbie as fashionably dressed as Jack, but never mind). One afternoon he finds two young siblings, Sara and Seth (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig), in his taxi, and he quickly discovers they’re aliens who have just crash-landed on Earth.

Either the film doesn’t completely explain the kids’ modus operandi or I just decided not to understand it, but I believe they’ve come to Earth because their planet is dying and they want to study our life-forms in hopes of saving their race from extinction. If they don’t get back home, Earth is doomed, but I forget exactly why. It doesn’t really matter, though, because the point of the movie is the race to Witch Mountain, where Sara and Seth’s ship has been quarantined by the government.

The movie supplies three different villains for our heroes to outrun: An evil alien called a Siphon, a PG-rated Terminator and has been programmed to stop the kids’ mission; a general with the Department of Defense (Ciarán Hinds) who wants to capture the young aliens for military tests (“They’re not children,” he growls. “They’re not even human!”); and two bumbling henchmen working for a crime lord to whom Jack is indebted.

It’s all very noisy and kinetic, only slowing down for sci-fi jargon that will baffle the kids in the audience. But “Race to Witch Mountain,” which is a reworking of two hit Disney pictures from the ‘70s, never seems to be trying very hard, and its plot is basically a series of predictable action scenes that require the characters to be chased from one location to another.

In fact, the movie falls into such a lockstep pattern that it never establishes a real sense of wonder. The filmmakers have mind-reading, time-bending extra-terrestrials at their disposal, and what do they have them do? Make spare change from the floor of a taxicab float in mid-air.

Directed by Andy Fickman. Written by Matt Lopez and Mark Bombeck; based on the book by Alexander Key. Starring Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Alexander Ludwig, Carla Gugino, Ciarán Hinds and Garry Marshall. PG; 98m.

Dawn of the superheroes

Watchmen
Review by Nathan Weinbender

In retrospect, Superman led a very simple existence. He was nearly invincible, he wore a flashy costume and had a beautiful girlfriend, and his main concern, other than saving the world from time to time, was keeping his real identity veiled behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.

Today’s superheroes are much different: They’re dark and brooding, bundles of neuroses in capes, and the focus has shifted from their amazing abilities to their vulnerabilities and personal anguish.

Now that superhero films have officially been legitimized with films like “Spider-Man 2,” “Iron Man” and “The Dark Knight,” it was only a matter of time before someone filmed Alan Moore’s “Watchmen,” a remarkable graphic novel that not only represented a major turning point for comic book artistry but also brought philosophical and sociopolitical issues to the forefront of the medium. If ever a comic could be described as thought-provoking, it’s “Watchmen.”

The Watchmen are like the Fantastic Four’s dysfunctional cousins; we’ll call them the Cynical Six. They are the second string of caped crusaders (following the Minutemen in the 1940s), and after years of respect and canonization, they have been outlawed by the government. They are set against the backdrop of an alternate version of our world in 1985: Nixon is in his fifth term, the world’s metropolises are criminal cesspools and U.S.-Russia relations are on the brink of nuclear disarmament.

The plot is set into motion with the murder of the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a crass and brutal ex-hero now working as a government informant. Investigating the crime is Rorschach (a brilliant Jackie Earle Haley), a masked vigilante who discovers a plot to kill his fellow Watchmen. He serves as the voice of the film, narrating his journal entries in a Travis Bickle-like growl.

Other retired heroes include Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a blue, radioactive figure who could just as easily save the world as he could destroy it; his girlfriend, Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman), a second generation avenger fed up with Manhattan’s dedication to his powers; Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), who leads a quiet, boring existence when he isn’t flying his airship over the city at night; and Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), a millionaire, entrepreneur and genius who has successfully marketed his own superhero image.

All of these characters are amalgams of others that have come before, but Moore took everything in a new direction by lowering their defenses and placing them in real world scenarios. When Superman fights Lex Luthor, or when Peter Parker slings his webs through New York City, it’s pure, wonderful escapism. When Dr. Manhattan, depressed and dejected, transports himself to the desolation of Mars, it carries a certain weight. There is no salvation for humanity if our sole saving grace is such a haunted figure.

“Watchmen” runs nearly three hours, but it rarely slows down. The director is Zack Snyder (“Dawn of the Dead,” “300”), who speeds through the story and amps up the violence to the point where the unwitting may go into shock.

He throws in some nice touches here and there, including what I believe was a vague “Citizen Kane” reference, and a soundtrack that includes well-known rock songs: The opening montage set to “The Times They Are a-Changin’” is terrific, but the sex scene featuring Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is palm-to-forehead pretentious.

The plot is an unwieldy creature, and while it slowly unfolded on the page, allowing us to slowly discover its secrets, it feels crammed into a manageable running time on the screen. For those uninitiated with the “Watchmen” universe, the film may seem impenetrable. As someone who has read the original graphic novel, I followed it all just fine.

Adapting the book must have been a daunting prospect (the script is credited to David Hayter and Alex Tse, but who knows how many writers have tinkered with it over the years). Not only is it incredibly ambitious—Moore himself called it unfilmable—following dozens of characters and madly hopping back and forth through time, it is of wildly divergent tones: It acts as a sort of new age tribute to old-fashioned superhero conventions, but it simultaneously thumbs its nose at them, and its cheeky reverence shook up the sagging comic industry of the ‘80s.

Moore, who goes uncredited here, also gave his characters debilitating flaws, and he forced them to make ethical decisions that directly undermined the very purpose of their existences as superheroes. We recently saw glimmers of this pessimism in “The Dark Knight,” which some have already labeled as the pinnacle of superhero cinema, and although “Watchmen” hardly lives up to the intensity of that film, it is still a good picture in its own right.

Directed by Zack Snyder. Written by David Hayter and Alex Tse; based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Starring Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Malin Akerman, Jackie Earle Haley, Matthew Goode, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Carla Gugino. R; 163m.

Withdrawn

The International
Review by Nathan Weinbender

I wonder what Alfred Hitchcock would have thought of “The International.” I can imagine him admiring the cinematography, greatly appreciating the orchestration of a handful of scenes and then furiously taking notes on how he could have made it a better picture.

How could Hitchcock have improved the film? For one, he wouldn’t have broken the momentum of the plot by having its characters sit around and explain it to us. He also wouldn’t have denied his characters an emotional entry point, so that the audience doesn’t care about who lives or dies. And he wouldn’t have made the villain, in this case a powerful bank, a complete non-entity.

The movie opens as Clive Owen, an agent for Interpol, investigates the mysterious death of his partner. The coroner says it’s a heart attack, but Owen is convinced it’s murder. After all, they had just recently discovered that the International Bank of Business and Credit is a hub for organized crime, and Owen believes the bank wants him dead.

Naomi Watts, who plays an assistant to the New York District Attorney, is along for the ride, looking forever solemn in yet another role that does nothing to accentuate her talents. (Has she ever played a role that didn’t require her to be humiliated, distressed or violated? I can’t think of one—in this film, she’s run over by a car.)

They uncover numerous conspiracies within the bank, bodies pile up around them and the plot works its way through tapped phones, foot chases, tumult at political rallies and second shooter theories. The movie effortlessly hops from Berlin to Milan, from Luxembourg to New York City, and finally to Istanbul, and it all plays like a fairly stiff collaboration between John Grisham and John Le Carré, with hints of Costa-Gavras and “Accounting for Dummies.”

Tom Tykwer is the director, and I’ve admired his previous work: “The Princess and the Warrior” and “Heaven” were sad and beautiful, and his masterpiece “Run Lola Run” had a kinetic energy that this film so desperately needs. He has a nice eye for visuals, and although it’s refreshing to see a thriller that makes cinematography a priority (there’s no indiscernible shaky-cam photography here, which is a welcome change), it’s unacceptable that the film is as dry as it is.

To give you an idea of the screenplay’s strange construction, consider the brilliantly-staged shootout set in the Guggenheim. It’s a great action set piece and would have made a superb climax, but it’s placed somewhere in the middle of the film so that it’s followed by more than half an hour of rambling, talky material. Talk about a buzz kill.

For an action picture, “The International” is surprisingly inert, a lot of long-winded exposition and leaden plotting interspersed by the occasional moment of excitement. There are twinges of brilliance here and there, mainly due to Tykwer’s impeccable sense of style, but the script, by first-timer Eric Warren Singer, really should have been Hitchcock approved.

Directed by Tom Tykwer. Written by Eric Warren Singer. Starring Clive Owen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Ulrich Thomsen and Brian F. O’Byrne. R; 118m.